Smoking with aluminum foil?

Alright so since I lost my nice little glass bowl a few months ago I've been using this cheap acrylic bong in its place whenever I want a personal toke...

Anyway, the bowl is metal (presumably steel), and after packing and smoking a bowl directly, the steel gets coated with resin very easily, moreso than glass, and the hole gets clogged pretty fast. So off the recommendation of a friend, I started fitting the steel bowl with a small piece of aluminum foil, poking a couple holes in it, and smoking out of that for the past couple of months. Then when I'm done I can just crumple it up with the ash in it and throw it away, and the actual surface of my bowl remains (relatively) clean.

Well, a couple people have mentioned the possibility of brain problems coming from smoking out of aluminum, and I figured I ought to look into it more...

I've came across a couple websites even linking heroin users smoking out of aluminum with getting Alzheimer's... does anybody know the scoop on smoking out of an aluminum-outlined bowl?

It is true that after a session the aluminum becomes slightly discolored (brownish in some areas); I wonder if I'm inhaling some parts of this metal and whether it's gonna fuck me up in the future??? I'm thinking though, couldn't the water in the bong filter out that nasty stuff though? I never take dry hits out of it BTW.

As of present I haven't felt any physical problems, except in the past couple months I've been having strange sporadic cramping, mostly in my fingers but also in other places, though I have no idea whether this is relevant to the aluminum or not. Maybe just too much stress or something.

Yeah I've heard that if you smoke from tin foil you get alzheimers but thats way down the line plus how bad can it be to forget people and things anyway.

Didnt read the post but DO NOT smoke out of tine foil. Whats so bad about forgetting things? Come on lets be real. I read that people who frequently smoke out of foil have 30% more aluminum in their brains then people who dont. True or not its something to think about. You ever hold a flame to some kind of metal or foil and see that trail of black smoke coming off? Youd be smoking all that, imagine what kind of tars their are in there.

aluminum foil doesent burn wtf ... i smoke out of aluminum foil all the time and its fine ..... try lighting aluminum foil .. it wont burn .... so therefore no smoke from the actual foil is inhaled ... so its ok

Read the damn sticky about tinfoil. It's either in seasoned tokers, recreational use, or general. i can't remember.

aluminum foil doesent burn wtf ... i smoke out of aluminum foil all the time and its fine ..... try lighting aluminum foil .. it wont burn .... so therefore no smoke from the actual foil is inhaled ... so its ok

haha i hope youre kidding

Aluminium foil does not give you alzheimers , omg. You have to heat foil to such a high temperature in order for it to give off any fumes or chemicals at all that there isn't even a lighter that could heat it so hot while smoking >.< It doesn't even give anything until it's melting point of 660.37°C! Trust me...you don't get temperatures like that while smoking. And that thing about foil smokers having 30% more aluminum in their brains is honestly just completely ridiculous. The black stuff that comes off of foil when you burn it too much has nothing to do with the foil, the chemicals in the ligter don't just disappear, of course there's going to be black smoke if you hold the flame under something for too long. You know why metals and foil are the only things that *seem* to let off black smoke if you burn them like that? Because they're the only things that DON'T actually burn. The only reason the black smoke happens with nothing else is because it doesn't get the chance to because it catches on fire! lol

Didnt read the post but DO NOT smoke out of tine foil. Whats so bad about forgetting things? Come on lets be real. I read that people who frequently smoke out of foil have 30% more aluminum in their brains then people who dont.

Thats false because not all people who frequently smoke out of tinfoil use a blowtorch to light their bowels. The melting point is 660-some and vapors don't come off until then.

True or not its something to think about.

If its false its somthing to discard. It is false.

You ever hold a flame to some kind of metal or foil and see that trail of black smoke coming off? Youd be smoking all that, imagine what kind of tars their are in there.

Tars from the weed you smoked through it yeah. People can replace bowels often enough that you don't need to do that, not to mention actually smoking that requires lighting the bowel for a much longer time than it would take to get a puff of green. you'd be smoking the same stuff in any gunked up pipe.

You ever hold a flame to some kind of metal or foil and see that trail of black smoke coming off? Youd be smoking all that, imagine what kind of tars their are in there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the black smoke is carbon from whatever fuel source you are using. Since most lighter fuels (ie. butane) are hydrocarbons.

Tin foil is not a healthy thing to use as a bowl.....plain and simple.

If it were harmful for you to smoke out of aluminum foil, then it would also have to be harmful for you to cook with it. You oven gets a lot hotter than a lighter would, so if your lighter was causing the aluminum foil to give off fumes, it would stand to reason that using aluminum foil to cook would do the same.

I am not saying that I recommend it, it is rather ghetto if you ask me, but I don't think it is going to kill you.

Can Aluminum Cause Alzheimer's Disease?
by Melvyn R. Werbach, M.D.


Senile dementia is a progressive degenerative brain disease associated with old age. Its symptoms include short-term memory loss, slowness in thought and movement, confusion, disorientation, depression, difficulty communicating, and loss of physical function. Alzheimer's disease accounts for about half of all senile dementia cases. Although there are many theories about what causes Alzheimer's, the fact is, its origins remain poorly understood.
One theory proposed that the common occurrence of being exposed to aluminum could cause Alzheimer's dementia. Aluminum, the theory postulated, becomes concentrated in the characteristic lesions (senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles) that develop in the brain during the course of the disease. At first, medical scientists thought this theory was absurd. Aluminum, they believed, accumulated merely as a result of a destructive process caused by some other factor.
In recent years, however, the aluminum hypothesis has been gaining respect. For example, studies have discovered a direct association between the level of aluminum in municipal drinking water and the risk of Alzheimer's dementia. One study found aluminum in drinking water was related to only this specific type of dementia;
another found that the probability of the association being due to chance was only 1 in 24, with a 46 percent increased risk for people drinking water with the highest aluminum levels. The use of aluminum-containing antiperspirants--but not the use of antiperspirants and deodorants in general--has also been associated with a risk of Alzheimer's dementia, with a trend toward a higher risk corresponding with increasing frequency of use. This relationship does not extend to aluminum-containing antacids, which may simply be evidence that the aluminum in antacids is not absorbed--the process of absorption through the gut mucosa is quite different from absorption through the skin.
We also know that serum aluminum concentrations increase with age. Aluminum may accumulate slowly over our lifetimes or we may absorb it more easily as we age. Moreover, there is evidence that people with probable Alzheimer's disease have serum aluminum levels that are often significantly higher than those of people with other types of dementia, as well healthy people of similar ages.Further evidence that aluminum fosters the development of Alzheimer's dementia comes from a scientific (placebo-controlled) trial of desferrioxamine, a drug that removes aluminum from the body by binding with it. While regular administration of the drug failed to stop the disease from progressing, desferrioxamine did significantly reduce the rate of decline in the ability of a group of people with Alzheimer's dementia to care for themselves.
Although the aluminum/Alzheimer's link remains unproven, I believe that waiting for definitive proof before taking a few easy and protective measures is foolhardy--and more scientists are starting to agree.
Perhaps one person in 10 age 65 or older suffers from dementia; by age 80 that figure rises to one in five. This is too common an illness to ignore preventive measures until we can know for certain why it develops.


Ways To Avoid Aluminum

Here are my suggestions for minimizing your exposure to aluminum.
* Drinking water should be low in aluminum. Some bottled-water companies provide an analysis of the aluminum content of their water. You might also find out from your public water company what the aluminum level is in the local drinking water.
* Aluminum-containing antiperspirants can easily be avoided, as can aluminum utensils and even, to play it safe, aluminum-containing antacids.
* Commercially processed foods such as cake and pancake mixes, frozen doughs and self-rising flour are sources of dietary aluminum, so their ingestion should be minimized. Watch for and avoid sodium aluminum phosphate, an ingredient in baking powder. Pickles and cheese should also be avoided.
* There is a close relationship between silicon and aluminum in Alzheimer brain lesions, as the two substances bind together to form aluminosilicates. High levels of silica in drinking water in the form of silicic acid do seem to protect against the adverse effects of aluminum ingestion, and silicic acid ingestion increases urinary aluminum excretion.
Whether silica supplements protect against the development of dementia has yet to be determined.
* Besides minimizing aluminum exposure, taking the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of calcium, magnesium and zinc should help to protect against aluminum accumulation.
Deficiencies of these important minerals are common among the elderly.
Yet, unless there is laboratory evidence of a zinc deficiency, I would not recommend zinc supplementation to help prevent Alzheimer's disease, for two reasons. First, beta-amyloid protein, the major substance found in the brain lesions (usually in a liquid form), binds with zinc. At concentrations only slightly higher than those normally found in the brain, excess zinc may convert the protein to the solid form that is found in Alzheimer lesions.
This suggests that, at least in theory, excess zinc could actually promote the development of the disease. Second, there is a lack of adequate research demonstrating the efficacy of zinc supplementation in preventing Alzheimer's, although in one study all six relatively young dementia victims had some memory improvement following supplementation with zinc aspartate.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td class="text">Typical Physical/Mechanical Properties</td></tr> <tr><td height="4"></td></tr> <tr><td height="10">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext"> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td class="smalltext">Density: </td><td class="smalltext">2600-2800 kg/m³</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext">Melting Point: </td><td class="smalltext">660 °C</td></tr><tr><td class="smalltext">Elastic Modulus: </td><td class="smalltext">70-79 GPa</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext">Poisson's Ratio: </td><td class="smalltext">0.33</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext">Tensile Strength: </td><td class="smalltext">230-570 MPa</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext">Yield Strength: </td><td class="smalltext">215-505 MPa</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext">Percent Elongation: </td><td class="smalltext">10-25%</td></tr> </tbody></table> </td></tr> <tr><td height="20">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="text">Typical Thermal Properties</td></tr> <tr><td height="4"></td></tr> <tr><td height="10">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="smalltext"> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td class="smalltext">Thermal Expansion Coefficient: </td><td class="smalltext">20.4-25.0 × 10^-6/K</td></tr> </tbody></table> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td height="20">
</td></tr></tbody></table>

Didnt read the post but DO NOT smoke out of tine foil. Whats so bad about forgetting things? Come on lets be real. I read that people who frequently smoke out of foil have 30% more aluminum in their brains then people who dont. True or not its something to think about. You ever hold a flame to some kind of metal or foil and see that trail of black smoke coming off? Youd be smoking all that, imagine what kind of tars their are in there.

I say you gotta do what you gotta do...And if that means smoking out of aluminum foil, then go for it...If "tars" are a concern for you, why do you smoke in the first place?

i have no glass bowl and havent had the money to buy one so ive been smoking out of a homemade aluminum bowl i hope all that is false about it or im fucked

I think it's been proven enough in this thread alone that aluminum foil doesn't burn within regular bic lighter conditions, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Yeah I've heard that if you smoke from tin foil you get alzheimers but thats way down the line plus how bad can it be to forget people and things anyway.

LOL I'm sorry but that's going into my sig. Beautiful